Dining Room - wiring

 Just a couple of quick pointers and reminders about doing wiring.  As always if you want more detail and videos take a look at these posts in my Dalton House blog.  You can also find some videos using the link you see there. 

Here are a couple of useful tools.  The first I would not be without if I had a a large project or I knew I would be making projects for years, is this handy wire cutter and stripper.  Saved a lot of fingernails and teeth over the years when stripping off the plastic from the copper wires.  I got mine from Small World which is now run by Little Houses Plus.  

The second useful thing here is either a fine knife, like a scalpel, or teeny, sharp,  pointed scissors like these embroidery ones.  I use these to just make the first snip between the encased twin wires which you can then just gently pull apart.  I have had them too many years to know where they came from.

Obviously the first thing is to decide exactly where the lights are going.  I do this by furnishing the room. If you are lucky it may be just a simple centre light and that's it done but, in the case of the dining room that would have set the chandelier of to the back edge of the table.  So I put the table where I wanted it to be and measured carefully from the front edge of the box to the centre of the table and transferred this measurement to the top of the box, centering it also from side to side.

Hoping this isn't a too obvious tip... I dampen a piece of kitchen roll and put below where I am  going to drill the hole.  I catches all the sawdust and being a bit damp stops it flirting about when you remove it and crumple it up.

When you drill the hole you often get a scruffy finish on the painted ceiling - generally this is easily covered by the light fitting and has never bothered me.  I suppose to avoid this you could drill from the ceiling side upwards rather than downwards especially when using a room box as you could turn it upside down easily.  

When you have your fire or light (etc) in place the wires will normally go in a groove to a suitable exit.  With a room box grooves aren't necessary - which is a small joy as they are a pain to do.  I simply taped them down with some masking tape.  I may swap it for sturdier tape I think.   They are being 'aimed' at the centre of the back of the box and a hole will be drilled through the book case at some time to let them pass through.

All the wires on the things I removed from the house are all sorts of lengths depending on the difficulty in removing them so they all need extending to exit the bookcase and travel on to the connector.   

The important thing here is to remember to cut one wire shorter than the other on both the extension wire and the fitting's wire..  

You then join the short extension wire to the long fitting's one and then via versa.  This offsets the exposed wires from each other to ensure they don't make contact.

.... a shrink tube is pushed over them and shrunk with a hairdryer.  Again, go to the link I gave earlier if you want more details of the process.

So, finally, the first room box room is ready to be lived in.  One down and five to go.